The Future of Faith, by Harvey Cox. HarperOne.
Culture Watch
Kathleen and James McGinnis 5-01-2010
Children's literature provides one of the most uplifting, energizing, and soul-freeing pursuits for any child—or any adult who cares about children. For those of us who live and breathe social justice or who grab at the edges of social justice whenever we can, children's literature can be visionary, comforting, and challenging as we think about our own role in the peace and justice universe.
The following books—for preschoolers to grade 3—are examples of the kind of children's literature that is rooted in gospel values and has a role in creating a more just world. The books reflect themes of respect for self and others, nonviolent communication, dealing with anger and forgiveness, respect for the environment, the importance of play and creativity, our global interdependence, and courage in the face of war and injustice. These values are shown in both practical and magical ways.
Katherine Paterson 5-01-2010
The summer that I was 17 years old, I, who was born of missionary parents in China, was rooming with a friend whose parents were missionaries in Africa. Although our mothers had been friends long before we were born, Mary and I first met as summer employees at our denomination’s conference center when she came back to the States to go to college. World War II had driven my parents out of China, so I had lived, since the age of 8, in various places in the southern United States.
One night after the day of waitressing was over, Mary began to read aloud to me Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country. At first it was just the sound of Mary’s Africa-haunted voice caressing the beauty of Paton’s language that kept me wide awake and enthralled. But gradually, chapter by chapter, that beauty told me of the unspeakable oppression and tragedy that was South Africa’s story for too many years. I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but suddenly one night the book came alive for me in a new way. I saw for the first time that the tragedy of South Africa was the tragedy of the American South, where I had been blind to the oppression from which I as a white person had been exempt. I began to cry, sob rather, for my own thoughtless sins and the sins of my people.
I look back on those tears as a turning point in my young life. I did not leave all my sins and fears on that wet pillow—I’m still not free from them—but I know my life began to change that night because of a book.
Caroline Gordon, in her book How to Read a Novel, speaks of the reading of a great book as a “conversion experience.” You are not the same person when you finish the last page, she says, that you were when you first sat down to read. I believe, from my own experience, that Gordon is right, and that is why I think reading is so important to our growth as wise and compassionate human beings.
Julie Polter 5-01-2010
The words “hope” and “change” have been taking a beating lately: mocked by some, tarnished in the political sphere by partisan gridlock, seeming like mere illusions to many who need them most. But hope and positive transformation are more profound realities than will ever fit comfortably in the 24-hour news cycle; they germinate in individual hearts and local communities and grow along the long arc of history.
Whether you’re trying to nurture change in your church community, neighborhood, or on a larger scale for our battered, beautiful world, here are some books that can get you started, keep you going, or help you begin again. Because hope, while sometimes down, is never out.
For starters, there’s the new and revised version of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times, by Paul Rogat Loeb (St. Martin’s Press). Through the stories and voices of dozens of activists from a wide variety of backgrounds and beliefs, Loeb names the psychological and cultural barriers that can stop us from becoming involved in issues that we care about and explores how such hindrances can be overcome. While not writing from a faith perspective, Loeb sees the search for meaning and values as key to the activist life, and includes several people of faith among his interviewees. This thoughtfully researched, engaging book is both grounded and inspiring. First published in 1999, it has been updated to include perspectives and insights from the tumultuous first decade of the 21st century.
Kate Bowman-Johnston 5-01-2010
When Kevin Barbieux became homeless in 1982, he was new to Nashville. At first, he relates in an e-mail interview, he spent his days hovering around a rescue mission. Then, as he met other homeless people who introduced him to the city’s attractions, he began to explore. He took long walks by the Cumberland River, visited the Tennessee State Museum—and found himself browsing the stacks of the downtown library.
“I wasn’t much of a reader, so I didn’t spent much time [there] initially,” Barbieux writes. “But I did have an interest in photography and art, so once I discovered those books I was at the library for hours at a time. ... The 750s and 770s [were] where I spent my time.”
For Barbieux, these Dewey Decimal numbers were not the vestiges of a dusty, archaic organizational system that few people today use, let alone commit to memory. Beginning with coffee-table art books, the library became a setting of vital importance and a main stop on the road to changing his life.
When public computers came on the scene, Barbieux used them, along with print resources, to research and produce an educational newsletter about homelessness. The library’s fledgling Internet service connected him with others doing the same, such as the publishers of Seattle’s Real Change newspaper. He began to do photography, eventually showing some of his work—which featured what he calls “an eye for inspiration in the mundane”—in galleries. And in August 2002, Barbieux tried his hand at blogging, then a relatively new phenomenon. His blog, The Homeless Guy, which he updated at the library, became an Internet sensation, and donations through the site gave him the funds he needed to get off the street for a time. Thanks to his newfound notoriety, he was also asked to join the mayor’s task force on ending homelessness in Nashville.
Kate Bowman-Johnston 5-01-2010
It's said that the best children’s literature appeals to the child in the adult and the adult in the child. Below, books for kids of all ages—and grown-ups who are young at heart—that simultaneously inform, challenge, and delight.
Picture Books for Young Children
Preschool to Grade 3
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type, by Doreen Cronin, illustrated by Betsy Lewin. Farmer Brown’s Holsteins presente! When the farmer won’t meet their demands for a warmer barn, the cows go on strike and rally other animals to bargain for better conditions. With goofy illustrations and plot details, the book is far from a heavy-handed treatise on union organizing, but children still take away the importance of speaking up for themselves and others. Simon & Schuster
He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands, written and illustrated by Kadir Nelson. The only words in this picture book are the lyrics to the titular spiritual, but Nelson’s lush illustrations make them sing. Beginning and ending with his place in the vast universe, the book follows a young boy as he flies a kite with his family, enjoys a rainstorm, and imagines life in distant lands. Dial Books
Silent Music, written and illustrated by James Rumford. As bombs fall on Baghdad in 2003, Ali finds comfort in soccer, pop music—and Arabic calligraphy. His pen strokes are embedded in the earthy collage style of the illustrations, with script adorning the background and details of garments. Drawing inspiration from a 13th-century calligrapher who made his art during another invasion, Ali observes that, in contrast to the word “war,” the pen “stubbornly resists me when I make the difficult waves and slanted staff of salam—peace.” Roaring Brook Press
Danny Duncan Collum 5-01-2010
High-speed Internet service arrived at our home this week. We’re only one decade late for the 21st century, and the rejoicing has reached the heavens.
We live in a mostly rural county of about 35,000 people, and for most of us the only alternative to dial-up is satellite service, which is high-speed but not as fast as cable broadband. Satellite is also unreliable in bad weather and very expensive.
My family’s digital leap forward came thanks to a local wireless company that started several years ago to provide high-speed business access for some of our big farmers. They began by putting transmitters atop grain silos, offering free service to the silo owner in lieu of rent. Now they have some real towers, and one of them can hit our hilltop home. If we lived in a valley, we’d still be out of luck.
All of this is not just a personal problem. Almost 10 percent of the U.S. population still has only dial-up, which, at this point, is almost unusable for anything except text e-mail. Add in the folks with no Internet connection at all, and you have one-fourth of our people left in the digital ditch. Those folks are not just missing the piano-playing cat on YouTube. The disconnected are also, for example, unable to take online college classes or download many public documents that are no longer readily available in print. And, increasingly, they simply don’t know what is being talked about during election campaigns that are often driven by online video postings.
Allyne Smith 4-01-2010
Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church Rather Than the State, by Daniel M. Bell Jr. Brazos Press.
Danny Duncan Collum 4-01-2010
I have a relative up in the Rust Belt who owns a small machine tool company and watches Fox News.
Gareth Higgins 4-01-2010
It’s the end of the world for Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli, one of the legion of recent films (including one actually titled Legion) that suggest that while the earth ma
Jeannie Choi 4-01-2010
Bio: Senior pastor, Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles.
Web site: www.ebcla.org
Julie Polter 3-01-2010
Spirited Women with Jesus Girls: True Tales of Growing Up Female and Evangelical
Danny Duncan Collum 3-01-2010
My oldest child is applying to colleges, so there’s been a lot of talk around my house this year about the underlying purpose and real value of education.
Robert Hirschfield 3-01-2010
Poet Meena Alexander and the shifting terrain of the migrant experience.
Kent Annan 3-01-2010
After Hurricane Jeanne struck Haiti in 2004, people gave abundantly from what little they had.